ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the intricacies of Congress Muslim politics as soon as June 3 partition plan was announced by the colonial government in 1947. It highlights the fact that the Congress High Commands’ decision to accept partition was rejected by rank file Congressmen in Uttar Pradesh which impacted politics immensely. The party lacking a common ideology or strategy succeeded in winning elections handsomely from 1951 onwards, but the cracks in the party and pressures of factional politics compounded by the lack of coordination between the PCC and AICC and the anti-Muslim attitudes of some of the senior-most Congress such as G.B. Pant, P.D. Tandon, Sampurnanand and Charan Singh impacted the party’s electoral prospects from the 1960s. The Congress party soon began losing by-elections and then seats in Assembly elections to parties such as the Jan Sangh who capitalized on the anti-Muslim sentiment among Hindus and refugees. With Nehru and his allies busy in central politics, the party at the state level was run by regional satraps who threw party discipline away to further their own careers.
